PowerGod
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The majority of movies were born because the books with those stories were written first.
It's almost impossible for a movie to be better than its respective book for different and obvious reasons:
There are anyway some exceptions ... some movies out there where made in a way that not only are able to make the story more catching, but maybe also more deep than the book.
This is naturally a personal preference, everyone likes different things from a book or a movie, but I'm curious to know what movies are better than their books in your opinion.
I'll start with these:
MOVIE = "Blade Runner" (1982)
VS
BOOK = "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
Reading the book I didn't imagined the city as good as it was depicted in the movie, the artistic photography, the colors, the sounds were actually a blast to me.
The androids are more cold in the book, yes them wants to live and fight for it, but that's it, while in the movie is made really obvious the range of feelings them can reach, and I felt more in affinity with the characters of the movie.
The fact that exists more versions of the movie, with different endings is just a plus.
MOVIE = "The Lord of the Rings" (Trilogy 2002 - 2004)
VS
BOOK = "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien
I know this could seem a direct attack to all the book fans out there, but that's it, I liked the book, a lot, but only after I finished it, not during the reading ... it was too overwhelmingly detailed, with too many deviations from the main story, I never appreciated to have integral song lyrics everywhere and I found many parts boring at a level that I really could have stopped reading at some point ... the only thing that kept me there was the main story.
The movies were great, the photography was like as I imagined it while reading the book, and most probably this is thanks to the "overwhelmingly detailed description" in the book that were taken really seriously by the directors.
The most important thing of the movies anyway is almost the total absence of deviations from the main story, almost no songs, a lot of action (maybe too much exaggerated sometimes) and a narration more speedy than the book ... the movies for me took only the best part of the book and removed all the boringness from it.
It's almost impossible for a movie to be better than its respective book for different and obvious reasons:
- Time compression - the entire story must work in somehow 2 hours, so the details to include or exclude must be chosen wisely and maybe the story itself must be cut or modified a bit, while a book could easily contains tens of hours of narration and descriptions
- Visual recreation - despite the quantity of details that are written in a book, the final result is always in the mind of the reader, every reader will imagine the characters and the areas adding by imagination all the missing things, while in a movie what you see is what the creators have chosen to represent, there's little space for imagination, also there could be financial limitation that could change what they actually wanted to show
- Deepness - there are many books written in a way that almost any paragraph can open different questions in your mind, a movie can do this too, but mostly it can't reach the same level of deepness ... the ideas must be understood faster in movie, them should be simplified or it could become boring / too complex to follow in so little time
There are anyway some exceptions ... some movies out there where made in a way that not only are able to make the story more catching, but maybe also more deep than the book.
This is naturally a personal preference, everyone likes different things from a book or a movie, but I'm curious to know what movies are better than their books in your opinion.
I'll start with these:
MOVIE = "Blade Runner" (1982)
VS
BOOK = "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
Reading the book I didn't imagined the city as good as it was depicted in the movie, the artistic photography, the colors, the sounds were actually a blast to me.
The androids are more cold in the book, yes them wants to live and fight for it, but that's it, while in the movie is made really obvious the range of feelings them can reach, and I felt more in affinity with the characters of the movie.
The fact that exists more versions of the movie, with different endings is just a plus.
MOVIE = "The Lord of the Rings" (Trilogy 2002 - 2004)
VS
BOOK = "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien
I know this could seem a direct attack to all the book fans out there, but that's it, I liked the book, a lot, but only after I finished it, not during the reading ... it was too overwhelmingly detailed, with too many deviations from the main story, I never appreciated to have integral song lyrics everywhere and I found many parts boring at a level that I really could have stopped reading at some point ... the only thing that kept me there was the main story.
The movies were great, the photography was like as I imagined it while reading the book, and most probably this is thanks to the "overwhelmingly detailed description" in the book that were taken really seriously by the directors.
The most important thing of the movies anyway is almost the total absence of deviations from the main story, almost no songs, a lot of action (maybe too much exaggerated sometimes) and a narration more speedy than the book ... the movies for me took only the best part of the book and removed all the boringness from it.
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